Should Home-Based Businesses Show Their Address on Google Maps to Rank Higher?
If you have a home-based business, you may have heard this advice before:
"If you hide your address on Google Maps, you'll hurt your rankings."
There is some truth to this idea. Local SEO experts such as Joy Hawkins from Sterling Sky have noticed that hiding your address can sometimes lower your local visibility, while showing it can improve your rankings.
However, Google clearly tells home-based and service-area businesses to hide their address if customers do not visit them.
So, what's really going on?
Here’s a straightforward answer:
Hiding your address is compliant and correct for most home-based businesses.
Showing your address can provide a marginal proximity advantage in some competitive markets.
This advantage exists but is frequently overstated, and it is rarely worth risking your safety if your business is based at home.
This is the method we use with our clients, and the rest of this post follows that approach.
Now that we’ve covered the basics, let’s look at how these guidelines affect the current discussion about address visibility and local rankings. The next section will review what current local SEO tests really show, clear up common myths, and explain the evidence behind the main claims.
Why This Topic Generates So Much Anxiety (And Why That Matters)
This is not the most important ranking factor for home-based businesses. In most cases, reviews, choosing the right category, and clear service descriptions matter more.
But this topic causes a lot of anxiety because the loudest voices online treat it only as an optimization problem, without thinking about who faces the real risks.
We've seen business owners told to expose their home addresses for marginal gains. We've watched women entrepreneurs second-guess Google's own guidance because an SEO video made them feel like they were "doing it wrong."
This post is here to give home-based business owners clear facts, context, and a framework that puts your safety first.
What the Local SEO Testing Actually Says (When Read Correctly)
People often use Joy Hawkins’ work to claim that hiding your address always hurts rankings. That’s not what she actually says.
Her conclusion, stated plainly, is closer to this:
In competitive local markets, visible addresses appear to strengthen proximity signals, and hiding an address can reduce visibility in some cases.
This is a careful and reasonable conclusion, and we agree with it.
Hawkins shares her findings responsibly. The real issue is how others misinterpret her work.
A single case study about ranking drops can turn into the claim that hiding your address always hurts visibility. Careful observations about competitive markets often get turned into broad advice that overlooks safety.
The gap between what the tests really show and how people repeat the findings is where problems start.
What These Tests Actually Tell Us
These tests show patterns, not guarantees:
They involve small samples or individual listings.
They don't isolate address visibility from every other variable.
They're more likely to show effects in dense, competitive metros.
These tests aren’t bad, but they do have limits. Treating them as more than they are can mislead business owners.
The Real Tension Google Creates (And Why It Matters)
Google's guidance is clear:
If customers come to your location, show your address.
If your business does not serve customers at its physical address, you can hide the address and specify a service area instead, according to Google.
This isn’t an impossible situation, but it does create real tension:
Regulatory compliance and protection point in one way
Marginal ranking optimization points to another.
Google is not being dishonest, but it is not designed to consider your personal safety. The algorithm cannot tell if an address is a storefront, a family home, or an individual business owner’s residence.
Because of this, it’s important to give responsible advice and ensure recommendations align with best practices and your unique situation. Business owners should carefully consider their risk tolerance, weigh the trade-offs between visibility and privacy, and seek expert advice if unsure. This way, you can make safe, well-informed decisions about your Google Business Profile.
Let's Be Precise About the Stakes
For most home-based businesses, this is not a critical ranking factor.
In the majority of cases:
Reviews
Category relevance
Service descriptions
Website clarity
...will matter far more than whether your address is visible.
Address visibility becomes relevant mainly when:
You're in a crowded metro area.
You're competing with dozens of similar providers nearby.
You already have strong reviews and a complete profile.
You're fighting for top-three placement.
This is a special-case optimization, not something most businesses need to worry about.
And special-case optimizations should never come before your safety.
The Safety Reality Most SEO Advice Ignores
For many business owners, especially women, solo practitioners, and anyone in sensitive industries, publishing a home address is not a neutral choice.
It can lead to unwanted visits, raise the risk of harassment, and make it harder to keep your personal and professional life separate.
Some of our clients have had strangers show up at their homes after hours, asking for service. We’ve also worked with women whose clients kept contacting them using their visible address, even after being told no. These are real risks, not just theories, and they don’t show up in ranking reports.
Advice that tells business owners to show their address for better rankings places the risk on the business owner, while the SEO advisor faces no consequences.
We consider that unacceptable.
The Moxie Recommendation Framework
Here’s the framework we use. It’s meant to be simple and clear.
Show Your Address If:
Customers regularly visit your location.
The address is a storefront, studio, or office.
You're comfortable with it being public.
Your business depends on local foot traffic or appointments.
In these situations, showing your address is consistent with customers' expectations and can improve local rankings.
Hide Your Address If:
You travel to clients or work remotely.
The address is your primary residence.
Safety, privacy, or boundaries are a concern.
In these situations, hiding your address is the right move, even if it means missing out on a small ranking boost in rare cases.
Consider Alternatives Only If Safety Is Not an Issue
If you're in a hyper-competitive market where closeness matters, but you don't want to expose your home, there are limited, legitimate alternatives:
A staffed coworking space where clients could theoretically meet you
A legitimate office location you actually use for client meetings or business operations
What we explicitly do not recommend:
PO boxes: Google's guidelines prohibit these for service-area businesses
Virtual offices: Unless you can genuinely meet clients there, this violates Google's requirement that addresses be locations where you conduct business with customers
Fake addresses or mail drops: This risks immediate suspension and is never worth short-term ranking gains
If you can’t safely display a real business location, hide your address and focus on improving other areas.
The Only Diagnostic Question That Actually Matters
Here’s the key question to ask:
Are you already doing everything else right and still not appearing in the top local results in a tough market?
If no:
Address visibility is not your bottleneck.
Focus on getting good reviews, making your business relevant, and keeping your information clear.
If yes, and safety is not a concern:
Address visibility or an alternative location may be worth testing carefully.
That’s the real point where you need to decide.
What Most Home-Based Businesses Should Actually Optimize
If you’ve chosen to hide your address, which is the best choice for most home-based businesses, here’s what you should focus on instead:
1. Get Your Primary Category Exactly Right
This is the best way to tell Google what your business does. Don’t pick a category just because it sounds good; choose the one that corresponds to what people actually search for.
2. Build Detailed Service Descriptions
List every service you offer, including the location. For example, instead of just saying "consulting," say "marketing consulting for retail businesses in Orange County."
3. Generate Real, Text-Rich Reviews
Google values reviews that include particular services and locations. After each project, ask clients to include what you did for them and where they are located.
4. Define Your Service Area Thoughtfully
Don’t just select every nearby city. Be thoughtful about where you want to work and where the competition is reasonable.
5. Make Your Website Do the Work
Your GBP links to your website. Make sure that the site clearly explains who you serve, what you do, and where you operate. Simple, fast, clear.
Collectively, these strategies enhance local search performance without revealing your home address, providing a longer-lasting, more effective framework for optimization rather than relying solely on address visibility.
The Larger Pattern This Reveals About SEO Advice
The debate around address visibility is not really about Google Maps. It reflects a larger problem in how SEO advice spreads.
The pattern is familiar:
A practitioner observes a correlation in a specific situation
That observation gets simplified into a rule
The rule gets repeated without context
Business owners feel pressured to follow advice that may not apply to them
We have seen this cycle many times before:
With keywords, where people were told they must use exact-match phrases
With content length, where blog posts were said to require 2,000 or more words
And now with local SEO, where business owners are told they must show their address to rank
Each claim usually starts with a grain of truth. The problem begins when nuance disappears and risk is ignored.
Our approach is different. We do not treat correlations as mandates. We evaluate the strength and limits of the available evidence, consider market conditions, and weigh potential upside against real-world consequences. Most importantly, we tailor recommendations to the business rather than applying generalized rules.
That is what responsible SEO looks like when it is focused on people, not just algorithms.
What to Do Next
If Your Path Is Clear:
Keep your address hidden and focus on reviews, categories, and service descriptions. That's the right move for most home-based businesses, and you don't need our help to make it happen.
If You're in the Gray Area:
If you’re within a crowded marketplace, have already optimized everything else, and still aren’t sure if address visibility is the missing piece, that’s when a focused strategy talk can help.
Book a 30-minute Google Business Profile strategy call, and we'll review your market, profile, and risk acceptance, then give you a direct recommendation. No pressure, no upselling just clear guidance on what makes sense for your specific situation.
If You Want Us to Just Handle It:
We offer full Google Business Profile setup and optimization as part of our local marketing services. If you’re tired of second-guessing SEO decisions and want someone to handle your local presence from start to finish, we can help.
Our Local Marketing Strategy Package includes:
Complete GBP audit and optimization
Review the generation system setup.
Service area strategy
Ongoing profile management
Monthly performance reporting
A Final Word on Safety vs. Rankings
We’ve written so much about this because we keep seeing business owners, especially women, put in tough situations by SEO advice that treats their safety as less important.
Rankings matter. Visibility matters. Growing your business matters.
But none of it matters more than your security and physical safety.
If you’re ever unsure about showing your address, the answer is no. There are always other ways to improve your ranking, but you can’t undo a safety issue.
At Moxie Creative Solutions, we believe clarity always beats hacks, and your well-being always beats incremental ranking gains.
If this sounds like the kind of marketing partner you're looking for, we’d be happy to work with you.
